


Under Pressure

by Katseester



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Family Dynamics, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Season/Series 02, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29469621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katseester/pseuds/Katseester
Summary: In the early morning, Jonathan can hear the soaring chords of Queen cutting across the crescendo of Freddie Mercury’s voice. There’s a click; the music stops and the tape rewinds, repeating to the building guitar solo, muffled by the walls separating their rooms. Will hasn’t been this happy in a while - a long while - and while Jonathan knows he has no idea what he’s doing, what he does know is this: he’s going to teach his little brother how to play the guitar.What he wasn’t expecting was Steve Harrington finding him in the damp basement hallway of their high school and lecturing him about sound acoustics or how the humidity was going to fuck up his strings.
Relationships: Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington
Comments: 9
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kypros](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kypros/gifts).



> Hi hello I watched the entirety of this show in a week and I'm pissed for what they did to all the characters in season 3 :)
> 
> BIG THANKS to [Kypros](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kypros/pseuds/Kypros) who is my beta and is pretty much my co-writer at this point lmao

MARCH, 1985

It all starts on a Friday night.

Jonathan is late leaving work. He's late leaving work because Jenny asked him to close up so she could catch the 8:45 showing of The Breakfast Club with her boyfriend. He’d called his mom, and then the Wheelers, so it’s fine. He doesn’t really mind it; the gas station is usually dead by close so it’s a pretty quiet affair, and Jonathan is usually out of there by five past the hour.

Still, his mom worries. So he made sure to call her. And then the Wheelers, because why not let Will know he has five extra minutes to chum it up with his pals? Sure, that’s definitely the reason.

Nancy had answered the phone. She promised to pass along his message to his brother, and then there was a kind-of pause before she said, “well, bye,” and hung up.

The drive to the Wheelers is uneventful. It’s the same drive he’s taken every Friday night since he landed this job: head to York, take a right on Desmond, and then a left onto Maple. Mrs. Wheeler answers the door, like she always does, and lets him in with the same bluster she always has. She leads him past the living room, where Ted is asleep in his Lazy Boy, to the basement door and then opens it, yelling down the stairs:

“Boys! Jonathan is here to pick Will up!”

A chorus of two, to the tune of disappointment, erupts from the basement.

“Just five more minutes!”

“We’re just getting to the good part!”

“Dude, can you believe - ”

“I know, isn’t it awesome?”

That last voice is Will’s. It’s loud, it’s boisterous, and it’s something Jonathan hasn’t heard much since before fall last year. He can see Karen gearing up to yell louder at the adolescents, so he raises his hand in what he hopes is a soothing gesture.

“It’s fine, five more minutes won’t kill, or anything.”

Karen levels him with a dubious look.

“Look, I’ll head down and make sure to drag Will up once whatever they’re doing is over,” Jonathan insists, and maybe it’s because he dated her daughter and they’re still friends or maybe it’s because he’s finally built himself up as a Responsible Member of Society or whatever, but Karen relents.

“Oh, alright. Be sure to holler when you leave, okay?” she says, crossing her arms.

Jonathan hops down the stairs. The rest of his brother’s friends have left by now, likely called home by curfew. Will and Mike are sitting in front of the old black and white T.V., enraptured by whatever program it is they’re watching. Jonathan takes a seat on the couch behind them and checks his watch for the time. 9:09.

It looks like the boys are watching MTV, if the gaudily-dressed musicians playing for a screaming crowd are any indication. Jonathan recognizes the distorted electric guitar riff as something from Queen - Killer-something? Ah, Killer Queen, they just said. Gunpowder, gelatine, dynamite with a laser beam. He doesn’t listen to Queen very much nowadays; he prefers their earlier stuff, and that never seems to play on the radio anymore. Still, he has a few of their tapes in his glove box for whenever the mood strikes.

Killer Queen ends and Jonathan lets the next song in the set - Somebody to Love - to play in its entirety before he says, “Alright, time to go.”

The concert isn’t over, and Will makes sure to let him know how unhappy he is with this, but Jonathan only has to remind him that mom is expecting them before his brother rolls his eyes, shrugs, and goes upstairs without a fight.

Jonathan yells to Karen that they’re leaving and hears a faint, “Drive safe!” from both her and Nancy upstairs in response. Ted snores on.

* * *

Will talks so much on the drive home that Jonathan's not sure how his lungs haven't exploded. When he finally pauses to take a breath, Jonathan asks,

“So, you like Queen, then?”

“I guess, yeah,” Will says, but then looks out the window. “During one of the songs, Freddie came out wearing a dress. I thought it was kind of cool, but Mike said it made him look stupid.”

Jonathan waits for Will to go on, but he doesn’t. He recognizes the reticence in his younger brother, the hunch in his shoulders and the dip of his chin, and he hates that his brother’s best friend made him feel like this.

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Jonathan says, eyes on the road, and he sees Will turn towards him through his periphery. “Freddie Mercury is cool. If I were a famous rockstar, I’d wear a dress on stage too.”

This evokes a surprised laugh from Will. “Really?” he asks, incredulous.

“Well, probably not,” Jonathan admits, laughing a bit himself, “but Freddie is cool. I think it takes a lot of courage to be yourself. Don’t you want to be like that?”

Will shakes his head. “Nah. I mean, sure, he’s cool and all, but you know who was cooler?”

“Who?”

“Brian Mays,” Will says, and Jonathan can hear the stars in his eyes through the wonder in his voice.  
“Wouldn’t it be just amazing if I could play like that? I mean, did you see what he did during Killer Queen? It was absolutely nuts!” And then he’s off again, talking Jonathan’s ear off until he pulls into their driveway.

“Hey,” Jonathan says again, before Will can unbuckle his seatbelt and launch himself out of the car. “I have some old Queen tapes in the glovebox. You can have a few, if you want. I don’t really listen to them all that much anymore.”

“Are you sure?” Will asks, because even with how excited he is - his fingers are already playing with the glovebox’s latch - he’s never managed to shake the habit of double- and triple-checking before accepting any gift.

“Yup. Go ahead, pick a couple.”

Thus assured, Will cracks open the glovebox and picks out exactly two tapes. Jonathan is probably going to have to tune it out in a couple of days, what with Will’s habit to endlessly repeat any new song he likes until everyone in the house is sick of it, but it’s worth it to see the way he clutches the tapes to his chest, like the most precious of cargo, as he unloads himself from the car and heads towards the house.

Jonathan follows, preparing to placate their mother for their lateness, but Joyce isn’t angry when he closes the door behind him. Instead her mouth is pulled into something like a smile and something like hope is dawning in her eyes, staring after her youngest down the hallway long after he’s shut the door to his bedroom.

“I haven’t seen him that happy since Halloween,” she remarks, and then turns her attention to Jonathan. “How was work?”

“It was fine,” Jonathan answers, an autopilot response, and heads to the kitchen for something to eat, gears turning in his head until he comes to one conclusion: he’s going to teach his little brother how to play guitar.

* * *

On Saturday morning he’s woken up by the strains of You’re My Best Friend filtering into his room from across the hall. His mom is already in her work uniform and is pinning her nametag to the front of her smock by the time he shuffles out of his room, and she gives him a _here we go again_ look and a significant eyebrow wiggle before heading into the living room. Jonathan follows her and leans on the door jamb, yawning widely.

“Could you give Will a ride to Mike’s on your way to work?” his mom asks, voice muffled by the couch cushions, and then she pulls back with a triumphant “a-ha!”, keys dangling from one hand. “I’ll pick him up on my way home tonight, I just - oh, dammit, I forgot about my tea!”

She runs to the kitchen where her tea is most likely very over-steeped. Jonathan calls out, “Yeah, I’ll give him a ride,” and then hears the wet _thwack_ of the tea bag being tossed into the kitchen sink before his mother brushes past him towards the front door. “Thank you,” she says, ruffling his hair on her way.

“Have a good day at work,” Jonathan calls after her, and she turns briefly to smile at him before the door closes and all he’s left with is the sound of You’re My Best Friend’s opening bars.

Jonathan starts on breakfast, yelling down the hall when it’s nearly ready, and only then does Will’s tape deck click off. Will meticulously crafts a sandwich out of his toast, margarine, and scrambled eggs, and then wolfs it down in about five seconds flat.

Jonathan isn’t sure how to start this conversation, so he just starts it.

“I picked up guitar again,” he says while Will is gulping down his orange juice. “I could teach you a thing or two, if you want.”

Will’s eyes are huge behind his cup of juice. “Really?” he asks, but then he frowns. “I never hear you play at home, though.”

“Yeah, because you’re always blasting music across the hall. I can’t concentrate,” Jonathan jibes, words lacking malice, and Will rolls his eyes before bringing his dishes over to the sink. He makes a disgusted noise at the soggy tea bag currently occupying the area. “So what do you think? I’m not as good as Brian Mays, but…”

“When can we start?” Will asks, surprising Jonathan with his enthusiasm. He sits back at the table while Jonathan finishes his breakfast, chin in hand.

“Well, I’m a little rusty,” Jonathan admits. “Give me a week.”

“Awesome,” Will says.

* * *

Saturday afternoon finds Jonathan at the local thrift store after work. Jeremy doesn’t even look up when he enters; Jonathan probably frequents the place more often than he does. He knows what he’s looking for, and finds it almost immediately: a beat-up old guitar that’s lost all its varnish, and advertised as being a steal for the low, low price of $8.95, case included. It has all the strings and from what he can see none of the wood is cracked, so Jonathan unhooks it from where it’s hanging on the wall and brings it up to the counter.

“You’re gonna need a strap,” Jeremy mumbles around the cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Excuse me?”

“A strap. A guitar strap. Unless you wanna drop the damn thing.”

“Okay,” Jonathan says. “Do you have any guitar straps right now?”

Jeremy shrugs. “Don’t think so.”

“Okay,” Jonathan says, and pays for the guitar.

“You know how to play that?” Jeremy asks.

“Sure,” Jonathan answers. “Been playing all my life.”

He leaves the thrift store to the sound of Jeremy’s disbelieving laughter.

* * *

Redfield’s Music Emporium is closing down. Jonathan has never been inside; the shiny interior always seemed so foreign and untouchable for someone like him, like if he stepped through the doorway everyone would turn and look at him and know he didn’t belong there, with all the expensive instruments and equipment. But Starcourt opened with a music store, and Redfield’s isn’t the first local business to fall victim to the mall.

There’s something now that stops him from getting out of his car, a feeling of unease in his gut that’s all too familiar to him. It’s a messy cocktail of fear and shame and anxiety, one that spills over into an unfounded premonition of failure, because he can’t ever not remind himself about how all of his plans in the past have been stupid, how they never worked out, and how they always ended with the same gut-punch of disappointment.

How every time he tried to make Will happy with something new and something exciting, something like watercolour painting or amateur birdwatching, Lonnie would always spit out that hateful word under his breath - "coupla queers," he would say, and he would make sure not to slur no matter how shitfaced he was, because Will didn't want to go shoot guns at animals or beat the shit out of other kids in sports. And Jonathan didn’t mind the insults - or rather, he had gotten very good at ignoring them - but then that curious and excited light would dim in Will's eyes, and Jonathan always hated that the most of all.

Turns out watercolour supplies are expensive. Turns out Will’s classmates thought birdwatching is for fags. And Lonnie got the satisfaction of watching his sons, too sensitive and too feminine and too much like their mother, fail one more time.

But Lonnie isn't here anymore.

Lonnie isn't here anymore, and Will's eyes shone under the streetlight when they drove home, and the timbre and cadence of his voice held so much barely-suppressed excitement as he gestured wildly with his hands that Jonathan thought his brother might actually be okay again soon.

Jonathan is sitting in his car outside of Redfield's, staring up at the giant red and white CLOSING SALE - EVERYTHING MUST GO banner strung up along the exterior of the building. He's not sure what he's doing - actually, scratch that. He has absolutely no idea what he's doing, but he's going to buy his little brother a guitar and teach him how to play.

The inside of Redfield’s is just as shiny as it looks from the outside, and it doesn’t take long before the lone salesperson takes pity on him and asks if he needs any help.

“Uh, yeah, actually,” he says, ignoring the way the back of his neck is prickling with discomfort. “I’m looking to buy a guitar. And a couple straps.”

All of the guitars are disgustingly expensive, even on clearance. Based on Will’s height the sales clerk recommends one of the 3/4 size guitars, but Jonathan knows that Will isn’t done growing. If his brother wants to keep playing - and he really, _really_ hopes he’ll want to keep playing - he’ll need a bigger guitar and Jonathan can’t afford to buy two. He picks out the least expensive full-size model, finds an inexpensive case for it, adds a couple of heavily discounted straps to his order, and when all is said and done Jonathan has almost no money left. He had done the math in his head the night before and he knows the electricity bill will be paid, so he tries not to let it sting too badly.

Contrary to what Jonathan had told Jeremy, he doesn’t know a whole lot about playing a guitar. He took a semester of guitar class last year because it seemed like something nice and easy and stress-free after everything that had happened with Will’s disappearance and the Upside Down. So he kind of knows how to tune a guitar; they’d used an old-fashioned tuning fork in class and then did this counting thing with the frets for rest of the pitches, but most of his class was seemingly tone-deaf and no one ever got it perfect.

Tuning a guitar is sort of where his knowledge ends. He knows a few chords - like the G-chord and the C-chord - and he can play maybe one scale (guitar class really didn’t go into very much detail about the whole “playing a guitar” thing, funnily enough), but unless he wants to teach Will the most boring, monotonous song in the world, he needs to figure something out.

The library is closing in about ten minutes by the time he arrives, and the librarian makes some comments about Will’s overdue books that Jonathan largely ignores, but by five o’clock he has a few beginners’ books on how to teach yourself to play and that’s - well, it’s a start. Will isn’t going to magically pick up learning an instrument at the speed of light, they’ll probably spend the first lesson going over the string names and how to properly hold the guitar anyway so there’s no use fretting.

He has time. He hopes.

* * *

On Sunday Jonathan brings his books to work and begins to read them between customers. Jenny is on the pump today and she flips him off whenever he looks out at her, but she probably won’t snitch.

The thing is, without a guitar in front of him or in his hands it’s pretty hard to conceptualize what the book tells him. He ends up quitting in frustration halfway through his shift, and flips Jenny off in return the next time she gestures at him. This causes her to pump her fist triumphantly in the air.

He tries again after work, but before he can make any real progress Will comes home and Jonathan refuses to let his little brother know that he’s actually awful, so he packs it up for the night.

If he has to practice during his lunch break at school, if that’s the only time where he’ll have some peace and quiet to concentrate, and nobody listening in to tell him how bad he is? Fine.

* * *

It’s been two months and five days since Jonathan and Nancy broke up. Not that he’s counting, except he is. Except it’s not for the reasons most people would suspect. He doesn’t still love Nancy - isn’t sure that he ever really _loved_ her - except that’s a lie, he did love her, he _does_ love her, just - just, not in the way that he should.

He thought he did. But then, he hooked up with her in Murray Bauman’s bunker after the guy made some weird remarks, so. What does he know?

If there’s anything he regrets in their relationship, it’s that. Because without that, he and Nancy probably wouldn’t have needed or wanted another push to be together from some outside force, and they probably would have stayed just friends. Their feelings probably would have fizzled out naturally over the next few months once they discovered they didn’t have really much of anything in common aside from almost dying together a few times. And then maybe, just maybe, there wouldn’t be this awkward air between them anymore whenever they tried to talk about anything deeper than the weather.

Or maybe Jonathan would still think that he was in love with her, and she would still think that she was in love with him, and they would have just delayed the inevitable. Who knows.

On New Year’s Eve, 1984, Jonathan and Nancy shared a kiss at midnight. And when she pulled back, Jonathan could see it in her eyes. He could see that she knew, and he hoped she could see that he also knew. They didn’t speak the words aloud - there was no, “I’m breaking up with you,” or, “this isn’t working.” Nancy just stepped away from him and nodded, mouth pursed, and Jonathan found it difficult to look at her because if he couldn’t love Nancy Wheeler, who the hell _could_ he love?

When he left the Wheeler residence soon after that, Nancy said, “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Jonathan said, shaking his head, and he meant it. He hoped to god she could hear that he meant it.

They still eat lunch together. In silence, mostly, but sometimes they talk about the weather. Sometimes they talk about classes, and sometimes they talk about school events, and sometimes they even talk about movies or television shows. But usually it’s the weather.

Today, they’re talking about Will.

“I think it’s great,” Nancy says. She’s idly scraping her plastic fork back and forth across the cafeteria’s mashed potatoes, making some pretty sharp ridges with the tines. “I know you’ve been worried about him since last October. Maybe this will help get his mind off of things.”

“I hope so,” Jonathan says. He’s already finished eating, so he consolidates his trash into one pile in front of him. “I just hope I can be a good enough teacher so it doesn’t all fall apart.”

Nancy’s fork pauses. “You’re teaching him?” she asks, tilting her head in the way she does when she doesn’t quite understand something. “I thought you were going to hire a teacher.”

Jonathan can see how she would make that mistake. When he told her about it he’d said, “So I figure, why not teach him how to play.” He hadn’t mentioned himself, or a teacher. It’s only natural Nancy would assume he meant the latter.

It still rankles. He hates that it does, knows that she doesn’t mean anything by it, but it’s just another reminder that she’s in a completely different world from him, one where she doesn’t have to worry about keeping a roof over her head before the age of eighteen.

“Yeah, I am,” he says. “Teaching him, I mean. Nothing complicated, though. I just want him to be able to get a handle on things so he can start experimenting on his own.”

Nancy nods, and her fork resumes its scraping. “It’s a great idea,” she says. Then something seems to occur to her. “Have you even touched a guitar since Bowman’s class?”

Jonathan shrugs. “I’m going to need to practice,” he says, and stands with his garbage, hoisting up the guitar case in his other hand.

“Right now?” Nancy asks, eyebrows flying towards her hairline.

“I’m on a time limit,” Jonathan explains. “I’ll see you in chem.”

The most quiet and secluded place in Hawkins High during the lunch hour is the basement hallway by the boiler room. Jonathan discovered it in ninth grade, when he didn’t have any friends to eat lunch with and got tired of the constant “freak” and “weirdo” jokes pointed in his direction. It’s kind of dark, kind of damp, and smells kind of weird, and no one except the janitorial staff ever goes down there.

He’s not happy to discover Steve Harrington in his spot.

It’s not that he dislikes Steve. Steve is fine, actually. Steve sometimes stops by his and Nancy’s lunch table and joins them for a little while, and the conversation always gets a little more livelier for it. Jonathan would actually say that he likes Steve.

The thing is, kind of liking someone as a person doesn’t automatically mean you’re prepared to monumentally embarrass yourself in front of them, and Jonathan has had enough of embarrassing himself in front of Steve Harrington to last him a lifetime.

“What are you doing here?” Steve asks him. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor under one of the few lights, and Jonathan can see a cafeteria chicken burger sitting in his lap, and a chocolate milk carton at his side. He looks surprised to see Jonathan, which is fair. Jonathan is surprised to see him, too.

“Nothing,” Jonathan automatically responds, and he considers trying to hide the bulky guitar case behind him but that would be kind of dumb, considering Steve has definitely already seen it. “What are you doing here?”

Steve quirks an eyebrow at him. “Eating,” he says, and takes a bite out of his chicken burger. “S’that a guitar?” he asks through a mouthful of food, and points to the offending object. He swallows. “I didn’t know you played.”

“I don’t,” Jonathan says. “I mean, not really. I took Bowman’s class last year.”

Steve nods. “Guitar is pretty cool.” He’s finished his burger, and begins guzzling his milk. 

“Yeah.”

Steve finishes drinking his milk. He stands up, dusts himself off of any stray crumbs, and gives Jonathan a lopsided smile as he passes by. “Well, see you.”

And just like that, Jonathan is alone. He checks his watch. He only has twenty minutes left.

Sighing, he sets himself up in the dark, damp, kind of smelly hallway, and tries his best to concentrate.

* * *

Jonathan is really, _really_ bad at this. He doesn’t get it. During Bowman’s class he picked up on everything relatively quickly, so why is learning from a book so damn hard in comparison? Following the instructions and the grainy pictures in the books leaves him feeling like his fingers are gigantic sacks of uncooperative meat that get in each others’ way whenever he needs to move them. And his crappy guitar keeps going out of tune in the damp hallway, so he has to waste precious lunch-hour time re-tuning it.

He’s not in the mood for whoever it is whose shoes are slapping against the stairs, and is utterly unsurprised to see that it’s Steve Harrington.

“Hey,” Steve says, and sits down across from him with his lunch. Today it’s a turkey club with chocolate milk.

“Hey,” Jonathan says back.

Steve starts eating his lunch. Jonathan tries to ignore him and tries even harder to figure out how the hell he’s supposed to switch from one chord to another without sounding like he’s strangling a bunch of straws.

After a minute of frustrating failure, Steve puts down his sandwich and says, “your middle finger is extended a bit too far.”

“What?”

“Your middle finger, it’s out a bit too far. It’s making it difficult for the rest of your fingers to get around it. That’s why it sounds like that,” Steve explains. “Try pulling it in a little bit and see how that feels when you change chords.”

Against his better judgment, Jonathan tries it. The chords sound cleanly through the dark hallway, and Jonathan gapes, first at his hands, and then at Steve.

“How did you know?” he asks. Steve shrugs and takes a swig of milk.

“I used to take lessons,” he says, nonchalant. “Finger placement used to trip me up too.”

Jonathan is finding it a little hard to process. Steve Harrington, King (or maybe now it’s Former King) of Hawkins High, knows how to play guitar? And he didn’t tell _anyone_?

“Bullshit,” he voices, and Steve snorts.

“Here, pass it over,” Steve says, holding out a hand. Jonathan unloops the strap from around his neck and hands the guitar over.

Something happens, then. A change comes over Steve, a shift in his posture that turns him from the laidback, kind of goofy guy that Jonathan sort of knows to someone a bit more serious, a bit more focused.

And then Steve starts to play.

It’s good. It’s really good. The song he’s playing isn’t something Jonathan has ever heard before. It feels somehow softer, daintier, than the music Jonathan typically associates with a guitar. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t really like it - it sounds like something his brother would load up in the cassette player for one of his DnD sessions - but Steve plays it so well that he doesn’t care about that. Jonathan just wants to keep watching him play.

Steve’s fingers abruptly pause, and the music stops. He sits frozen for a moment, frown lines creasing his forehead, before dropping his hands and relaxing back into his previous position. “I don’t remember the rest,” he admits sheepishly, and gives Jonathan his guitar back.

“What was that?” Jonathan asks.

“Uh,” Steve says, scratching at his jaw. “I think the guy’s name was Dowland or something? Don’t ask me the name of the song or anything, though, because I definitely don’t remember that.”

Instead of looping the guitar strap around his neck and continuing to ignore Steve, Jonathan places the guitar on his lap. “So you took lessons?” he asks, and Steve looks at him with an expression oddly reminiscent of a deer right before it gets hit by a car.

“Yeah,” Steve says. He finally looks away from Jonathan, picking at his sandwich. “Parents made me take ‘em when I was a kid. They actually started me out on violin, but that was the lamest shit ever, so they let me switch over to guitar. I thought I would learn all these cool songs and be able to show it off to everyone at school. Instead I got to learn...that.”

Jonathan can see why Steve never told anyone about it. Dowland, or whatever his name was, was decidedly uncool. Steve would have been laughed out of the building.

“It sounded really good,” Jonathan says, and Steve gives him that lopsided smile again. Jonathan looks away.

“Thanks, man.”

This time when Steve finishes his lunch, he doesn’t leave. Jonathan resumes practicing, and Steve sometimes points out things he can change or do better, and they almost always work. It’s almost a disappointment when the bell rings.

“Hey, uh,” Steve says, while Jonathan is packing up his guitar. “So I ran into Nancy earlier and she mentioned you want to teach your brother how to play?” He phrases it like a question, tone lilting upwards near the end.

Jonathan clicks the locks on the case. “Yeah. He really likes Brian Mays. From Queen,” he adds, in case Steve somehow doesn’t know. Steve’s eyes light up like a bundle of Christmas lights, though.

“Queen? Dude, I love Queen!” he enthuses, and then sings a horrible rendition of one of the chorus parts in Bohemian Rhapsody. Jonathan isn’t quite sure what to make of it, but it sounds so bad in the damp, echoing hallway he can’t help but laugh. “Anyway,” Steve says, once they’ve both stopped laughing, “Nancy was real concerned that you don’t know how to play - please don’t tell her I said that by the way, she would kill me - so I got to thinking.”

Jonathan doesn’t make the typical “haha, Steve Harrington, _thinking_?” joke, partly because it’s needlessly mean, and mostly because it’s just not true.

But Steve doesn’t continue, just stands there biting his lip, face screwed up in a way that Jonathan recognizes but never expected to see on him. Steve Harrington, not knowing what to say? Haha, oh, that’s a riot.

Jonathan starts to say, “Uh, the bell - ” just as Steve says, “I can teach you.” 

There’s a beat of silence.

“If you want,” Steve adds. His lips are pulled back in a grimace, one hand mussing his already-messy hair.

“Um,” Jonathan says.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, I just thought it might help,” Steve rambles. “Nancy said you’re on a time limit and I don’t know what that time limit is but I could probably whip you into shape pretty quickly, and it’s not like Will is going to pick the guitar up and know how to rock out immediately so, like, we got time and stuff.”

“That would be - cool,” Jonathan says, stilted. He’s still waiting for the punchline.

“Cool!” Steve says almost immediately. “But, uh, this is kind of a shitty spot for learning guitar. No offense,” he adds quickly. “It’s just...really wet down here? Your guitar is going to go out of tune super fast and then it’ll sound like shit no matter what you do.”

Jonathan had noticed. “Where do you want to do it, then?” he asks. The tardy bell rings, and Steve acts like he doesn’t hear it.

“My parents are never home,” he suggests, nonchalant, but Jonathan can see through his unconcerned facade; Steve is absolutely jittering with nerves. “And I still have a bunch of equipment. Music stands and all that, makes it easier to read.”

Jonathan nods. “Okay,” he says, “sounds good.”

Steve’s smile is almost blinding. “Cool,” he says, finally turning on his heel and heading towards the stairs. “See you after school?”

“Sure,” Jonathan calls after him.

Nancy gives him a quizzical look when he stumbles into chem ten minutes late, and even the walk of shame to the office for a late slip doesn’t dampen his spirits. He’s beginning to feel, for the first time since he had this idea, that it might all work out. He’s walking on cloud nine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I have no idea how to actually play guitar but I do play piano so please go easy on me.
> 
> I'm taking creative license on Queen's setlist during their The Works tour. I Want to Break Free is no longer an encore song for plot purposes. :V
> 
> John Dowland was a composer during the Renaissance. I was thinking of [this piece](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HYE1EjfvQs) when I pictured Steve playing him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hhhhh as always HUGE THANKS to my beta [Kypros](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kypros), without whom this probably would never get written.

Jonathan isn’t sure what he expected to happen once the last bell of the day rings. It certainly isn’t the sight of Steve Harrington lounging on the hood of his shitbox Ford.

"I know where your house is," Jonathan says, as though Steve doesn't already know that. They've been neighbours since elementary school.

"Yeah, uh, do you have jumper cables?" Steve asks. Jonathan does. “I think I mighta left my lights on this morning or something.”

Steve's BMW won't start. Stubbornly refuses to, even with a little extra juice from Jonathan's engine.

“Piece of shit,” Steve swears, kicking at one of the front tires.

Jonathan tries the ignition one more time, and to his immense surprise the vehicle sputters to life, engine turning over three or four times before it catches and smooths out into a rumble.

“Oh, _fuck_ yeah!” Steve exclaims. He holds a hand out, palm facing Jonathan, and Jonathan gives him the high-five he wants. Jonathan climbs out of the driver’s seat, leaving the engine running. He’d made that mistake before, turning the car off after it sparked back to life, and the battery had re-died almost immediately.

A few other students have stopped to watch, some pointing and laughing behind their hands, and Jonathan doesn’t get why the hell helping someone with car troubles is so damn funny, so he flips them off, yells, “take a picture,” and ignores the collective gasp that ripples throughout them. They scatter soon after.

Steve is impressed. “Dude, when did you get so - don’t take this the wrong way, but that was actually kind of cool?”

Jonathan sort of shrugs as he leans into his Ford to turn off the engine.“Can you get those?” he says, gesturing with his head to the cables connected to the BMW’s battery. “Opposite order to how we connected them. Make sure they don’t touch anything until they’re all unhooked.” They successfully unhook their cars without electrocuting anything or anyone, and Steve passes his clamps over. Jonathan chucks the cables into his trunk, and then carefully closes his hood. Steve does the same, and then leans against the wheel well.

“None of that seems important anymore,” Jonathan says, in answer to Steve’s partially-asked question. “Those people and what they think of me? It doesn’t matter. It never did. I guess now I just have the backbone to tell them to fuck off.”

He can see by the way Steve is nodding his head that he understands, or at least sort of understands. It had taken the discovery of a parallel world full of monsters, his family almost dying a few times, and his mom’s boyfriend _actually_ dying, but Jonathan couldn’t care less about what the general populace of Hawkins Goddamned High thinks of him. They’ve never had a good opinion of him. Who gives a shit what they think now? It’s all so insignificant.

“What about you?” he asks in return, and Steve gives him another deer-in-headlights look. “Why were you eating lunch in that nasty hallway?”

It’s Steve’s turn to shrug. “My skin isn’t as thick as yours, I guess,” he says. “I was getting tired of all the jokes.”

Jonathan can believe it. He hasn’t been paying attention, not really, but it would be difficult _not_ to notice Steve Harrington’s supposed fall from grace from the darling, douchebag jock that everyone wanted to be friends with to the guy who can’t beat Billy Hargrove in basketball and who sometimes hangs out with his ex-girlfriend and Jonathan Byers, certified freak, at lunchtime. It hasn’t escaped Jonathan’s notice that Steve hadn’t submitted any applications for college or university, and it certainly hadn’t escaped the notice of some of the meaner cliques in the school.

The other boy hasn’t had the years of practice Jonathan has, ignoring the jibes and the snide remarks and open contempt.

“You get used to it,” Jonathan says. “It sucks - trust me, I know - but those people don’t know you or what you’re like. They’re the idiots, here.”

Steve’s mouth pulls up into that lopsided grin. It’s magnetic, almost, and Jonathan can see how it would dazzle anyone he turned it on. He’s almost dazzled, himself.

“Thanks,” he says, and Jonathan almost doesn’t hear it over the rumble of Steve’s BMW.

“No problem,” he replies, looking away before he says something stupid. “I think your battery should be good now.”

This is where they run into another problem: Steve’s car refuses to move.

“What the fuck,” Steve groans, banging his head lightly against his steering wheel. “What - the - _fuck_. What the hell did you do to my car, Byers?!”

“I didn’t do anything,” Jonathan scowls. He’s staring down at Steve’s engine block. Everything under the hood _looks_ fine. “Your transmission might’ve died.”

Steve makes a displeased gurgling sound. Jonathan is sympathetic; of all the things to break in his car, a transmission repair is possibly one of the most expensive fixes.

They give up trying to make the car move after another fruitless fifteen minutes and skulk back into the school to use one of the office phones. Steve calls a tow and Jonathan, taking pity, gives him a ride to the mechanic instead of forcing him to sit with the admittedly sketchy-looking tow truck driver.

“Yer transmission’s gone and croaked,” the mechanic tells them. “Might be a week before we can get the part in. Might be two, since you got a fancy Beemer an’ all. Gotta import everything.”

“Fuck,” Steve swears emphatically, and the mechanic guffaws.

“Won’t be cheap either,” the man says. “You got some shit luck, here.”

Steve gives the mechanic his info and they leave his car in the lot. The ride to Steve’s is quiet; Steve has his forehead resting against the window, staring forlornly out at the grey, wet, March scenery, and Jonathan doesn’t have much to say.

Jonathan pulls into Steve’s empty driveway, and they just sit there for a minute, both unsure of how to proceed.

“You still wanna come in?” Steve finally asks, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket. “I know it’s getting late.”

It’s an out if Jonathan wants one; an easy decline, supplied by Steve himself.

Jonathan doesn’t really want an out. He wants to learn how to play guitar better, and he actually kind of likes hanging out with Steve, now that he’s not a posturing, mouthy asshole.

Well, he’s still kind of mouthy. But Jonathan doesn’t mind it.

“Sure,” he says. “I’ve got time before I need to be home.”

* * *

Jonathan has never been inside Steve’s house. He kind of expected it to look the way it does: clean, expensive, untouched. As though no one actually lives here. There’s a mess in the kitchen sink - Steve obviously didn’t clean up after himself this morning - but otherwise everything seems to be immaculate.

Steve’s room is another story. There’s clothes hanging sloppily on the side of his laundry hamper, his bed is unmade, and there’s a jumble of hair products - including a dusty set of hot stick hair rollers, the kind Jonathan’s mom uses - scattered across his dresser. Jonathan pretends he doesn’t see the bottle of Farah Fawcett spray.

“Huh, it’s kind of a shithole in here,” Steve observes, as though he’d forgotten the state in which he’d left his room. He hastily and haphazardly makes his bed and shoves the rest of his laundry into the hamper.

Jonathan doesn’t care how messy it is. Steve saw his house when it was halfway torn apart with Christmas lights strung up every which way, and again when it was plastered with drawings of tunnels on every possible surface. No amount of disarray can really phase Jonathan after that.

They get themselves set up. Steve pulls a chair out from under another pile of laundry, and then digs in his closet for a couple of those folding wire-frame music stands. Next he gets onto his hands and knees, reaching underneath his bed, and drags a dusty guitar case out from it. Jonathan sneezes when Steve pats it clean.

“So,” Steve says. He's sitting on his bed, fiddling with the pins; the pitch overshoots a bit into sharpness and he frowns. Jonathan is sitting on the chair opposite him. "What do you want to learn?"

Jonathan frowns at him. “Uh, how to not suck?”

Steve nods as though this is a perfectly acceptable answer. “Easy. Done. Next question, please.”

Jonathan laughs at the sheer audacity. “You don't know that I don't suck, man.”

“No, I do know that you don't suck because I heard you playing today and once you figured out how to not choke your strings it was pretty damn good,” Steve argues, and the confident, unabashed compliment causes heat to rise in Jonathan's cheeks. Steve sees his embarrassment and looks away, clearing his throat. “Considering you haven’t so much as touched a guitar since Bowman’s class,” he adds to his closet door.

“Nancy told you that too?” Jonathan asks, exasperated, and Steve’s cheeks turn faintly pink; it’s all the answer Jonathan needs. “You two are still close,” he says, and it’s not a question, not really. He’s seen the way the two interact, the friendly jabs and teasing they put the other through on a daily basis.

“Sort of,” Steve concedes. He’s still staring at his closet door, and his fingers have begun lightly strumming at the strings beneath them. Every so often he shifts to a new chord, seemingly without thinking about it. It’s nice. Jonathan is kind of mesmerized. “I mean, yeah, we are, but not in the way everyone thinks, y’know? I’m not trying to get into her pants or anything. It’s just...different now, I guess. We’re friends, but it’s still kind of…” he trails off, and his fingers still on the strings, allowing the sound to die out.

“Hey, I get it,” Jonathan says, and Steve finally looks at him. His eyes are tired, more tired than Jonathan has ever seen them except for maybe the night they beat the shit out of the Demagorgon together, after the adrenaline wore off. “Believe me, I get it. We’re still friends, too, but it’s...hard to talk, sometimes. Half the time I can’t think of anything to say and then I wonder if we ruined our friendship.” It’s freeing, admitting that. And to the only other person in Hawkins who probably knows how he feels, too.

Steve huffs out a relieved laugh. “You too, huh,” he muses. “Or...I can’t really say we were friends before we dated, but. I get it?”

It’s - nice, talking to Steve like this. Without any of the pretense or bluster. He wonders now: if either of them had bothered to reach out after the whole Demagorgon thing, would things have been different? With Steve, with Nancy, with everything. If Steve had been in the picture, or, hell, anywhere near the periphery, would Jonathan have approached Nancy that night in Bauman’s bunker? He doesn’t think he would have. It’s too easy to picture, and makes Jonathan ache for something that never existed.

“So you took Bowman’s class, which means you probably don’t know a whole lot besides some chords and scales,” Steve guesses correctly, and suddenly they’re back in lesson-mode. Jonathan shows him what he knows (which isn’t a lot), and Steve shows him how to play some more scales, and then some more chords. He’s a good teacher - better than Bowman, at the very least - and by the time Jonathan’s fingers have started to hurt and they call it a night he feels he has a pretty good handle on them, all thanks to Steve’s encouragement.

“Oh, here,” Steve says, digging around in a pile of books he’d pulled out from his closet. He holds out one titled EASY GUITAR: FIFTEEN POPULAR SONGS FOR BEGINNERS and Jonathan takes it. He flips through it, heart sinking with every page.

“Um,” he says, squinting down at the lines and numbers, “I don’t know how to read this.”

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up towards his floppy fringe. “Oh, shit,” he says, “I completely forgot. Shit. Okay, gimme a sec.” He grabs a notebook from the book pile, scootches back on his bed until he can lean over and grab a pen from his desk, and starts doodling. After a few minutes, he rips the page out and passes it to Jonathan.

“I’ve written down all the chords you know, and their corresponding tabs,” Steve explains, and then points them all out to Jonathan. It...makes sense, he thinks.

“Thanks,” he says, brow furrowed, and Steve laughs at the trepidation in his voice.

“With a bit of practice it’ll be like second nature,” he assures Jonathan. “My teacher used to say it’s like learning a second language. Not that I was ever any good at that.”

Jonathan folds the paper and carefully tucks it into one of the compartments in his case. He was never very good at languages either; he’d taken Spanish for a semester and came out of it knowing how to say, “My name is Jonathan and I like pancakes.” A thought strikes him. “How are you getting to school tomorrow?” he asks. Steve’s lips purse, pulling back into a small grimace.

“Dunno,” he says. “Dad won’t be too happy about the car. I might have to pull out my bike.”

What the fuck. In March? No. “I’ll give you a ride,” Jonathan says, bewildered. There’s still snow on the ground, for fuck’s sake. The last thing he needs is for Steve to slip on a patch of slush and crack his head on the pavement.

“You don’t have to,” Steve tries to say, but Jonathan shakes his head.

“I want to,” he insists. He busies himself with gathering his belongings so he doesn’t have to look at Steve’s shocked expression. “As thanks for this. For teaching me.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and when Jonathan dares to look over he’s blinking owlishly at him. “Okay. That’s...that’ll be cool, then.”

Steve follows him downstairs to the front door. “You don’t go to school freakishly early or anything, do you?” he asks while Jonathan is putting on his shoes.

Jonathan straightens up and gives Steve a look that he hopes reads as, _are you serious?,_ and then opens the front door. “I’ll see you around 7:30.”

* * *

Steve’s driveway is empty the next morning. Jonathan doesn’t know if that means his parents left extremely early, or if they just didn’t bother coming home.

Jonathan is starting to get an idea of what kind of people Steve’s parents are. He doesn’t think he likes them. They probably wouldn’t like him, either, so it’s fine.

He knocks on the door, and when Steve opens it he’s completely unsurprised to see the other boy still in his pajamas with a toothbrush sticking out of the corner of his mouth. His hair is, as always, perfectly and purposefully messy. Jonathan checks his watch, very deliberately.

“I know, I know, I slept through my alarm,” Steve drawls, rolling his eyes, though the effect is ruined by the frothy toothpaste dotting his lips. “Gimme, like, five minutes.”

Jonathan waits at the dining room table while Steve finishes getting ready. There’s a few family pictures set up around the room, some propped up on the cabinets lining the walls, some framed and hung on the wall. Steve doesn’t look very old in any of them.

After what seems like ages Steve appears in the doorway, dressed and with his backpack hanging off one shoulder. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” he says with all the confidence of someone who doesn’t realize exactly how lame they sound. Jonathan raises an eyebrow at him but doesn’t comment on it.

Jonathan soon learns that if he wants a quiet drive to school, he probably shouldn’t listen to David Bowie. Steve sings along to every song, seems to know every single lyric, and is so obnoxiously terrible at doing a Bowie impression that Jonathan almost wants to chuck him out of the window at their first stop sign. He doesn’t, and by the time they roll into the school parking lot he’s actually bobbing his head along a little bit while Steve belts his lungs out in the passenger seat.

It’s a shame, Jonathan thinks, that they can’t just keep driving until the tape runs out. Until his gas runs out. Until the road runs out.

Steve joins him and Nancy in the cafeteria for lunch that day, bringing with him a basket of chicken fingers and fries. “Byers, why aren’t you practicing?” he demands, accusatory, and Jonathan sputters indignantly. He is _clearly_ still eating. Nancy almost succeeds in hiding her snort behind her hand.

“The basement hallway is kind of a shitty spot for learning guitar,” he recites. Steve narrows his eyes.

“No excuses, Byers. I won’t have you embarrassing yourself in front of your brother on my watch.”

Jesus christ. “Fine. But can I finish, you know, _eating_ , first?”

“True art waits for no one,” Steve says.

“True art can shut up and eat his french fries,” Jonathan retorts, and then takes a bite out of his sandwich, pointing to his chewing mouth whenever Steve tries to say anything else. He leaves Steve and Nancy once he finishes eating, and heads down to the shitty, damp hallway to get in the requisite twenty minutes Steve had assigned him the night before.

* * *

Steve has a pained expression on his face. “It sounds good,” he says, but when Jonathan shifts to another chord, fingers squealing against the nylon strings again, he winces. “Okay, fucking stop that, please.”

Jonathan hadn’t been doing it on purpose at first. The sound doesn’t bother him - it reminds him of the squeaking of sneakers against the gym floor, actually - but Steve had sucked his lips over his teeth the third time he’d done it, and Jonathan, always curious, wanted to see how far he could push it before Steve lost his mind.

He’d made it to eight.

“I know you know what you’re doing, and I know you know it’s driving me a little bit up the wall,” Steve continues, “and if this is payback for lunchtime then _fuck you_ and please oh my god stop.”

Jonathan eases off the strings.

“ _Thank_ you. Okay, so which song did you pick from the book to learn?” Steve asks.

“Heart of Gold,” Jonathan replies, flipping to the correct page. “Neil Young. The tabs look pretty simple, but I’m having a hard time with the rhythm.” 

Steve nods. “Understandable. What are you having problems with?”

Jonathan doesn’t think “everything,” will fly as an answer, so he shrugs. “I think it will be easier to just show you,” he says, and when Steve gestures for him to go on, he does so.

He doesn’t make it to the chorus before Steve tells him to stop. “Your strumming’s all out of whack,” he explains. “You’re doing it like this - ” he imitates Jonathan’s movements, and they look goofy, even to him. “When it should be more like this.” His second demonstration looks smoother and sounds much better. “Give it a try.”

Jonathan does. It feels, and sounds, a little better, but it’s still not great. “I don’t get why this is so hard,” he gripes, frowning down at his strumming hand and willing it to start cooperating.

“Practice,” Steve replies automatically. “Sorry, I know that doesn’t help. I mean, it does, in the long run, but not right now. Where’d you learn how to strum, anyway?”

Jonathan gives him a look: _do you even have to ask?_ “Bowman’s class,” he says anyways, just in case Steve doesn’t parse that all from one glare. “It was usually just on one chord, though.”

“God, he sounds like such a shit teacher. How did he even explain it to you guys?” Steve asks, and then makes an excited noise as Jonathan manages the chord change seamlessly.

“Well, he used to say, ‘strum like a toilet seat at a college mixer party.’”

Steve looks nonplussed. “What - what the fuck does that mean?” he asks, voice strained.

“Up, down, up, down, up, down,” Jonathan recites with a straight face.

“Jesus fucking christ,” Steve breathes. “No wonder you guys didn’t learn anything.”

Jonathan can’t help it: he laughs. And then Steve is laughing with him. “He didn’t even teach you how to read tabs,” Steve wheezes. “How the fuck are you supposed to play guitar if you don’t know how to read _tabs_?”

“One day,” Jonathan says, wiping his eyes, “he told us to just practice our fingering and then sat at his desk and put his head down.”

“Oh my god,” Steve laughs.

“For the entire period,” Jonathan elaborates, and Steve laughs harder.

“How hungover was he?” Steve asks. He's clutching at his side.

“No idea,” Jonathan says, shaking his head. “He didn’t even get up when the bell rang.”

“Only the best for Hawkins High,” Steve utters disdainfully, and Jonathan couldn’t agree more.

* * *

They’ve gotten into a sort-of routine. Jonathan picks Steve up in the morning at around 7:30. Steve sings along to whatever Jonathan is listening to if he knows the words. They arrive at school, part ways, and meet up again in the cafeteria at lunch before Jonathan hides himself away in the boiler room hallway to practice. They meet again after school and Jonathan drives them to Steve’s, where they spend a couple hours having a lesson in between goofing off. Jonathan goes home, and tries not to think too much about how Steve’s eyes, brown and warm, shine when he laughs.

On Friday Jonathan can’t stay since he has to work, so he drops Steve at home - overriding Steve’s protests that he can walk, it’s fine, with a, “Steve, it’s snowing,” - before spending a frigid few hours pumping gas. He flips off Jenny whenever she looks out the window at him.

He gets off work on time - Jenny is currently “on break” with her boyfriend, so she has no excuse to wheedle him into staying late - and then drives to the Wheelers’. Karen answers the door, and yells down the stairs that Jonathan is here. He and Will pile into his Ford.

“Can we listen to Queen?” Will asks, and even though they’ve been listening to Queen every day through Will’s bedroom door, Jonathan acquiesces.

So Will shuffles around in the glove box for a minute before pulling out Hot Space, and they listen to one of Jonathan’s least favourite Queen albums on the way home. He’d bought it because of the duet with David Bowie, and only ever pulls it out when he wants to listen to it.

Jonathan pulls into their driveway. Before he kills the engine, he says, “Wait a minute, there’s a song I want to show you.” He ejects the tape, flips it to its B side, inserts it back into the cassette player, and fast-forwards to the very last song of the album.

Will is enthralled immediately. He bobs his head to the beat, a smile unfurling on his lips, and Jonathan is proud that his little brother at least has the good sense to like one of the most iconic collaborations in recent history. Jonathan even starts singing along about halfway through, shocking a surprised and delighted laugh out of Will. By the time the song fades out with the sharp finger snaps Jonathan loves, Will is humming along.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Jonathan says. He ejects the tape and kills the engine.

“Can I learn that one?” Will asks in awe. Jonathan hands him the tape.

“Sure,” he says. He doesn’t even have to think twice about that answer. “But first we gotta actually teach you how to play.”

* * *

Jonathan calls Steve. He has to look through all the papers in his guitar case for his number - Steve had scrawled it down on one of the sheets yesterday - and doesn’t even think about the fact that his parents might answer before the ringing stops and Steve says,

“Yoooooo, this’s Steve.”

“Hey, it’s me,” Jonathan says. “Jonathan.”

“Jonathan!” Steve repeats. “Man, I was kinda hoping you’d call. I found a little hair scrunchie that would probably look pretty decent with your sweater. Y’know the one, it’s, like, beige, or tan, or whatever. Has the crinkly edges.”

Jonathan frowns. “Am I interrupting something?” he asks. The burgeoning excitement that had been swelling like a balloon in his gut since he came inside has begun to deflate a little.

“What? Nah,” Steve says. “Just lil’ ol’ me here tonight. What’d you need?”

“I’m, uh, do you have the tabs for Under Pressure?” Jonathan asks.

Steve hums on the other end of the line. And then he keeps humming. “Shit, man, I dunno actually. I could take a look around?” He fumbles the phone, and in the staticky mess of interference Jonathan hears the crack and hiss of a can opening.

Oh. That would explain a few things. “Is that a beer?” Jonathan asks, just to be sure.

“Caught me,” Steve admits before taking a very audible sip, and Jonathan hates how he can hear the lazy smile through his voice. “You wanna come over and help me look? Honestly I probably can’t find anything right now.”

“I work in the morning,” Jonathan says, and hates that it’s true. Not that he _wants_ to be around a drunk Steve Harrington, exactly, just that. He wouldn’t mind being drunk _with_ Steve Harrington. If that makes sense.

“Boooooo,” Steve boos. “S’all good, man. I know you gotta, uh, what exactly is it you do?”

“I work at the gas station,” Jonathan says.

“Which one?”

There’s only two in town. “Gus’s.”

“ _Ohhhh_ , okay, yeah, that makes sense,” Steve says, and he’s probably nodding even though Jonathan can’t see it. The thought makes Jonathan smile. “Welp, next week then.”

“I work every weekend,” Jonathan reminds him, and Steve makes a frustrated noise.

“Ugh, you’re right. I hate when you’re right,” he complains. “We’ll figure something out. I’m not ending this school year without seeing you puke your guts out.”

“Drink some water,” Jonathan says, and they hang up.

* * *

It was worth spending almost all his money on a new guitar to see the look on Will’s face when he opens the case.

“Oh my god,” Will breathes, running his fingers over the smooth, polished wood.

“A few rules, before you accidentally drop it,” Jonathan says, and holds out the strap for Will to take. “Always wear this. _Be careful_ with it, please. Don’t screw around with loosening and tightening the strings too much; I don’t have any extras.” He knows Will will treat the guitar with utmost care, but it’s not him he’s really worried about. “And don’t let your friends touch it.”

“Aw, what?” Will grouses, giving him a betrayed look.

“Do you want Dustin getting grease all over everything?” Jonathan asks pointedly. “Or Mike snapping a string?”

Will makes a face. “Okay, fine, no one gets to touch it.”

“That includes El’s mind power stuff,” Jonathan says. He can picture all too clearly how that could go wrong.

“Alright, I get it, my friends are klutzes! Can we please begin?” Will says, exasperated.

Jonathan shows him how to attach the strap, and then how to hold the instrument properly. Or, as proper as he knows how to. He shows Will the different strings and tells him the names, plucking each one on his own guitar so Will can get an ear for the pitch. And then he shows Will how to tune the thing with the tuning fork he filched from the overflowing box in the music room at school.

He tries his best to explain tabs and how to read them, but Will’s confused frown tells him he’s probably doing this out of order, so he abandons that idea for now and instead shows him how to play a C-chord. Will is delighted when it doesn’t sound like strangled straws, and immediately writes down which frets make the chord. And then Jonathan remembers that he hasn’t explained what frets are yet, so he does that, showing off the difference in pitch for each fret by playing up the B-string, one fret at a time.

All in all, Jonathan would call it a pretty successful lesson.

“How’d it go?” his mom asks, once Jonathan extrapolates himself from Will’s bedroom.

“I can play a C-chord!” Will yells from within his room, and then demonstrates loudly.

“Oh, wonderful,” Joyce says, tilting her head uncertainly at Jonathan.

“It went well,” Jonathan confirms.

Honestly, Jonathan is a little bit afraid at how quickly Will picked everything up. Bowman may be a shit teacher, but they didn’t learn chords until halfway through the semester.

He calls Steve.

“Yo. Steve here.”

“I think my brother might be some kind of musical genius,” Jonathan says, “and I’m kind of freaking out.”

He can hear the squint in Steve’s eyes when he speaks. “What, is he, like, jamming out?”

“Sort of?” Jonathan says. “I taught him a chord and he won’t stop playing it, if that counts.” He holds the phone away from his ear so Steve can hear.

Steve is laughing when he brings the phone back to his ear. “Dude, knowing one chord doesn’t mean he’s a progeny or anything.”

“Do you mean prodigy?” Jonathan asks.

“I think so?” Steve says. “I’m hungover. Doesn’t matter. Listen, unless he’s the next Mozart or whatever you have nothing to worry about. How’s your strumming coming along?”

“Fine,” Jonathan lies.

“Sure it is,” Steve says, and then dissolves into queasy laughter. “Sorry. Just thinking about toilet seats. Anyway. If it’s not up to snuff on Monday we’re going to spend the entire lesson going over it. I _will_ teach you how to strum properly if it kills me.”

“I think at that point I’d just quit,” Jonathan says flatly.

“Don’t you dare,” Steve threatens.

* * *

It turns out Steve doesn’t have the tabs to Under Pressure because he quit seriously playing guitar a year before it came out. They spend an hour going through his music books and loose leaf scores before Steve sits ramrod straight and says, “oh, fuck, I’m an idiot.”

Jonathan wants to strangle him for wasting so much time, but instead he says, “We’re going to Redfield’s tomorrow after school.”

“You think they’ll have it?” Steve asks, skeptical, and Jonathan shrugs.

“If not, we can always check the thrift store. Jeremy’ll be glad to see me again,” Jonathan says, sarcastic. Secretly, he kind of wants to rub it in the guy’s face.

On the bright side, his strumming is getting better. Steve reckons they can start doing fingerpicking soon, as long as Jonathan keeps improving.

Will is practicing when he gets home. Quietly, so as not to disturb him, Jonathan grabs his camera from his room and then, quietly, opens the door to Will’s. Will doesn’t even look up until the flash goes off.

“Dude,” he complains, so Jonathan takes another picture, just because.

Will’s annoyed groan follows him back to his own room. Tomorrow he’s going to find the tabs for Under Pressure with Steve, and if neither Redfield’s, the thrift store, or the library has them, Jonathan has a feeling he can convince Steve to help him write the tabs out himself.

Tomorrow will be a good day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bowman's behaviour is based off of one of my high school teachers. I never had class with him, but I heard the stories, man.
> 
> Also just realized Bowman sounds an awful lot like Bauman and I SWEAR that was unintentional lmao


End file.
